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one closed
the door. Number two closed ranks.
    They waddled before me down the marble-covered hall that bisected the
residence. Their gait was remarkably splay-footed. It appeared that at any
moment each twin was likely to split down the middle and march away from his
other half straight into one of the mahogany-wainscoted walls.
    We marched all the way to the end of the
hallway and on through the double French doors at the end of the passage. We
were in a small foyer between the main house and the giant solarium at the
back. They stepped back and ushered me into the stifling sunroom. It was at
least eighty-five degrees inside, as humid as New Orleans in August. The doors
closed behind me.
    A dazzling array of tropical plants and shrubs, some pushing the thirty-foot
glass roof, dipped in the moist air. A greenhouse with furniture.
    "Leo." A hoarse voice beckoned from the far end of the room.
    I wandered over. Tim Flood, or what was left of him, was nearly lost amid
the cushions of the ancient wicker settee that fanned out behind his head like
a halo.
    "Sit," he said, motioning toward a green wicker chair that had
been drawn up by his side. Sweat was beginning to form on my scalp, deodorant
failure was imminent, but Tim Flood, beneath the bright afghan, was wearing a
sweater. I sat.
    He looked pretty good. Smaller than I remembered, beginning the same descent
back inside himself that I'd watched my father take, but holding up pretty
well. His hawk-like nose had become more prominent with advancing age and his
bony liver-spotted hands rested limply on the padded arms of the lounger like
bird's feet, but the eyes were as hard as they'd always been.
    "Thanks for coming, Leo." His voice was husky enough to pull a
dogsled. "What can we get you to drink?"
    "Bourbon rocks."
    The words were hardly out of my mouth before Frankie Ortega appeared, drink
in hand. Back over his shoulder, through the massive ferns, I could see a
portable bar along the north wall.
    Frankie had taken his own advice. He'd changed into a blue three-piece suit
highlighted by a blue-and-green-striped tie riding above a tight collar pin. He
hadn't broken a sweat. Tim spoke.
    "If you don't' mind, Leo, we'll eat in here." Runnels of sweat
trickled down my back, soaking the elastic of my shorts. Serving food in this
room probably saved the cook a great deal of time. By the time he got the stuff
carted over to Tim, it was probably poached. I took a pull of my drink, trying
to will myself to stop sweating. No go.
    Tim turned his attention to me. "Been a long time, Leo." When I
didn't respond, he went on. "Your father's funeral was the last time,
wasn't it?" I agreed. "We come a long way together, me and him. From
Hooverville to the halls of power, he liked to say." I had heard all the
stories before, but was determined to be polite. I didn't want to end up
fertilizing one of the palms.
    Tim seemed to find new strength as he selectively rooted through the past.
Now, more than fifty years later, even the rain-soaked nights spent in a
reeking board shack on the tide flats seemed to hold a certain romantic appeal
for him. He seemed to pine for the long nights spent huddled around a
bark-fired cookstove, the inevitable smoke filling the upper half of the shack,
the sopping bedrolls and mattresses serving as the only furniture.
    He recited the oft-told tale of how he and my father had first made their
mark as part of Hooverville's vigilante Sanitation Committee. To Tim, the
building of the privies and catwalks seemed to be the perfect dinner
conversation. He reached full animation as he recounted how, on a particularly
foul night in December - 1933, he thought it was - a dissolute stonecutter
named Herman somethingorother had slipped on one of the greasy catwalks,
tumbled headfirst into a privy, and unceremoniously drowned amid the collected
effluent in the hand-dug pit below. Yessir, bring on the food.
    "Well, Tim," I interjected the first time he came up for air,
"you've